


Three Thousand Blazing Filaments

by Vilestrumpet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Branding, Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, Dom/sub Play, Drugged Sherlock, F/F, F/M, Humiliation, M/M, Needles, Paddling, Restraints, Riding Crops, Sexual Slavery, Voyeurism, Whipping, m/s relationship, sploshing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2633093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilestrumpet/pseuds/Vilestrumpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“As part of my ongoing pursuit of knowledge I wish to take up the opportunity of your acquaintance to research BDSM.  My research thus far has been purely of a theoretical nature and I would like to… observe the practical application of your techniques on live subjects.  Specifically the emotional state of your clients when they are under your...ministrations. Why they choose to submit to your control.  How you assert your dominance over them.  In short, will you let me watch you at work?”    </p><p>Irene Adler is good at her job and Sherlock finds himself captivated by her power and allure.  Old memories that he didn't delete are dredged up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to redbuttonhole for giving me the idea for the fic and for her fantastic editing and writing advice. Also thanks to splix for constant encouragement, guidance, friendship and beta-reading.
> 
> I expect this work to have 7 chapters or thereabouts. I will be trying to post every fortnight.

The riding crop pressed into his throat as he lay supine on the hard floor.

 _Oh how interesting. The booby-trapped safe. A syringe of tranquilizer. So well-prepared. The camera phone really is your life - I believe you now. A woman prepared to do_ anything _to protect your advantage.  Vicious and highly motivated.  Capricious and callous.  Sadistic and lethal.  Marvellous woman._ The _Woman._  In his mind he rubbed his hands and jumped with glee at this new adversary. How wrong he was to underestimate her.

“Oh no no no no no. It’s been a pleasure. Don’t spoil it. This is how I want you to remember me: the woman who beat you.  Good night, Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock couldn’t remember feeling the sting of the crop but the zipping sound of it slicing through the air buzzed on in his ears.  He stared up at the face of The Woman standing astride him- her black hair, pale complexion and red lips giving her a vampiric air - swimming in and out of focus above him.  Morphing from demon to angel, horns to halo, as he lost his grip on reality.  His face gurned as he reached out to grab her raised arm but he didn’t try very hard.  As the tranquilizer rushed through his veins Sherlock was wrapped in the blissful warm blanket that he missed from the old days.  Oh, how he missed it - the transcendent state of euphoria.  Losing control. Drowning. Floating. Flying. Total surrender and detachment from the world.  He loved it, and in that moment as he glided over the threshold of semi-consciousness into oblivion, he thanked the brutal goddess who gave him that rush.   

oooooo

Sherlock took a long piss, the last dregs of the barbiturate leaving his system.   It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d drugged him - John said it was probably thiopental - and Sherlock felt a wave of nostalgia to see it exiting his body and disappearing down the u-bend. He stared at his pale drawn reflection in the bathroom mirror as he washed his hands.  He pulled his black stretchy headband down to his neck and pushed it back up over his forehead to hold his hair off his face.  Ghosting his fingers over the blooming bruises on his chest and arms, he replayed the scene, shivering, as he remembered the hard slap on his face, and the momentary fear he felt at the savagery that came from nowhere.  He recalled the drifting sensations and sighed deeply.  He closed his eyes as he splashed cold water on his face and in the darkness he allowed an old memory to unspool. _Thank you, thank you, thank you for surprising me.  And for reminding me._

When Sherlock told John that women were not his area, he knew he’d given John the wrong idea but the truth would have been too long-winded. No labels had ever applied to Sherlock. Desire or arousal fell into two categories. The first was just carnal release. Any warm body would do for that, usually whilst under the influence of either extreme boredom or drugs. He had not indulged in this type of activity for several years, since he’d managed to control and tame his transport. The second category was where Sherlock supposed he was sapiosexual. His blood had warmed and he had been drawn to a few people who had impressed him with their brilliant mind or competence in a skill he didn’t have. Gender was irrelevant; the attraction was to the mind of the individual. As there were very few people in the world that Sherlock admired, this particular index card in the walnut library cabinet of his mind palace was virtually unmarked.

 _Irene Adler_. He was thinking of her constantly. He told himself that she was occupying his thoughts simply because she was a ruthless adversary. The enemy of the State - the Head of State even - and perhaps Mycroft.  My enemy’s enemy is my friend.  No crime as such had been committed, except assault and battery on Sherlock.  Hardly the worst damage he’d suffered.  The disturbing question that turned in his mind was why she intrigued him so much.  Her face, her lips, her smell, her voice, her touch.  They kept insinuating themselves into his thoughts despite his repeated efforts to shove them out of his head.  When her text alerts came through, they were almost a relief, jolting him back out of his thoughts of that remembered high.  

oooooo

“As part of my ongoing pursuit of knowledge I wish to take up the opportunity of your acquaintance to research BDSM.  My research thus far has been purely of a theoretical nature and I would like to… observe the practical application of your techniques on live subjects.  Specifically the emotional state of your clients when they are under your...ministrations. Why they choose to submit to your control.  How you assert your dominance over them.  In short, will you let me watch you at work?”    

“Really? Acquaintances? I thought I was your enemy Mr Holmes?”

“Bygones. I’ve told my client that the photos are safe where they are. I have no independent interest in your camera phone. Besides, I think you owe me. Those Americans seemed determined to have your scalp.”

“You know perfectly well I could have handled them, just as I handled you.”

“Yes, well, that’s another reason that you owe me a favour.”

“Very well, Mr Holmes. Just because it’s you. I have some clients who don’t mind being observed. In fact, they quite like it. My rooms are suitably appointed for the voyeurs amongst us.”

“I’m not – “

“5pm Thursday. You know the address.” She hung up.

oooooo

Kate buzzed open the door of Number 44, Eaton Square.  “Come in, Mr Holmes”, she purred , her too-big teeth forcing her lips apart in a faint conspiratorial smile.  “I’ll take you up. Miss Adler will be with you shortly.  Can I get you a drink?”

“No thanks.”

As she led him upstairs to the second floor of the house, Sherlock took in the fox-haired woman properly this time. She cast an undulating S-shape with her body, one hip jutting out in counterpoint to a dropped shoulder, head always slightly bowed or tilted, eyes looking up through her lashes in a submissive yet mocking gaze. Definitely John’s type, Sherlock thought as he continued to observe the unhurried, slinky gait of a woman who was sure of her place in the world. Dressed again in a silk shirt, dark blue this time with cream trim, buttoned up demurely to the neck, and a mid-calf black skirt, she was clearly much more than the “maid” that Irene had referred to in their first meeting.  

Kate opened a door to a small room, plushly decorated as it seemed all the rooms in this house were, and indicated a low slipper chair.  She slid her hand under an ornate picture frame which sprung up to reveal a small window to an empty room that could be described as a dungeon although it wasn’t neither below ground nor dark or gloomy.  The walls were covered with damask wallpaper like the sitting room and Irene’s bedroom but in deep purple this time, and heavy grey devoré velvet curtains swathed the sash windows.  The interior designer had clearly been working to a very consistent brief. There were a couple of hard-looking chairs, and a velvet-covered chaise-longue.  Heavy rings on chains hung from the high ceilings, and bolts and eye-hooks were dotted around on the walls and on the floor.  On one wall hung various sized canes, ticklers, floggers, whips, paddles, crops, quirts, and a variety of restraints. There were two unmissable pieces of furniture in the room: a free-standing St Andrew’s Cross in pale, unvarnished American Oak, partly sheathed with ox-blood leather padding secured with shiny rivets, and a similarly minimalist saw-horse, like a miniature picnic bench.  The two wooden pieces bore Shaker-style levels of custom-made craftsmanship and had high-quality ironmongery in the shape of large rings affixed at each extremity.  No one entering this room would fail to be affected by the erotic charge emitted by these totems of discipline.  

“I use this window to take photographs for Miss Adler,” said Kate, interrupting Sherlock’s inspection of the room.

“What are you to her? Maid, photographer, driver, PA, lover?” he mused, not expecting an answer.

Kate responded by smoothly slipping the top button from her blouse and pulling it down to reveal to Sherlock a heavy silver chain-link choker with a small padlock on it.

“Ah, you’re... enslaved.”

“I live to serve my mistress,” Kate said simply.

“Interesting.” Sherlock slid down into the chair and regarded Kate with searching eyes.  The youngest of three children, raised in a council estate in a dreary new town like Stevenage or Milton Keynes, to lower middle-class parents on benefits, trained as a dancer and singer after obtaining a full scholarship to an all-girls performing arts boarding school.   “Total power exchange.   What is so special about Miss Adler that invites such self-sacrifice?”

“An invitation to sacrifice is a privilege,” replied Kate without hesitation.  “The more I sacrifice, the better I can serve my mistress.”    

“And how does it feel to see your mistress take her clothes off in there and offer specialised sexual services to the elite?  Does she care at all what you feel?”  Kate certainly didn’t seem even a tiny bit jealous of sharing her lover but Sherlock was genuinely curious as to what was the attraction of working as an unpaid skivvy and sex slave whilst watching Irene Adler play kinky games with members of the establishment.  

“Miss Adler does NOT offer sexual services to clients,” snapped Kate. “You clearly don’t know much about the business of being a dominatrix.  Perhaps you will learn something today.  Miss Adler's next client will be in shortly. Enjoy.”  

She turned briskly and left the room.  Sherlock had not questioned Mycroft’s conflation of “dominatrix” and “sex”.  She was right. He should have done more research, but the last few days had been...confusing.

Five minutes later Kate reappeared in the “dungeon” with a baby-faced, Scandinavian man in his mid-forties, dressed in the business casual attire of a Silicon Roundabout overachiever.  Triathlete, gaming app entrepreneur, divorced with two small children he sees every other weekend and a penchant for MBA-speak, Sherlock’s brain rattled reflexively.   

The man exhaled as he relaxed into one of the chairs but immediately stood up to attention when the door opened again and Irene walked in, every one of her 5ft 4inches exuding regal comportment and a bored, disdainful air.  She was dressed primly in a black satin shirt-dress, collar high, cuffs low, and high-heeled leather boots with red soles to match her nails and lips, obscuring almost all skin, looking like a very severe and beautiful librarian.

Sherlock realised he couldn’t hear much of what was being said in the room until he flicked a switch which activated a speaker for one-way listening.

“Well, my little hamster. Let’s get straight to it, shall we?” she clipped, eyes flashing like angry diamonds as she stalked around the room with arms clasped behind her back.  “You have been a very disobedient pet and I am extremely cross with you. Are you wearing the g-string?”

The man cowered under Irene’s intent gaze roaming up and down his body and flushed, with self-consciousness.  He nodded and whispered, “Yes, Miss Adler.”    

“Strip. Now. But leave the g-string.”  She sat down on a chair opposite him, her back ramrod straight.

Hamster-man’s hands fluttered nervously as he shed his clothing, revealing a red lacy g-string.  Before he could straighten up properly Irene stood up and strode towards him lightning-fast, and gripped his neck with one tiny hand, forcing him to stumble backwards in surprise until his head hit the wall behind him with a painful-sounding thud.  She pressed hard into his throat with both hands, looking up at him scornfully.  The man had at least eight inches in height and five stone on her but he looked utterly helpless and feeble, offering no resistance, as if all his strength had been shed with his clothes.  Blood had rushed to his face and his barely-covered penis, leaving little for anywhere else.  His arms hung slack and uselessly at his side.  His only protest was choked groaning and wide fearful eyes.  

“You time-wasting, useless piece of shit,” she hissed.  “You pathetic, slime-drenched, scab-encrusted weasel of a boy. I’m going to make you see how disobedient you’ve been by thrashing you until you scream and then shoving something extremely uncomfortable into your dry, dirty arsehole.”

Sherlock stifled a chuckle at this point.  He had heard and read all about verbal humiliation but until this point he had never imagined quite how funny it would sound. The menacing tone from Irene was good acting on her part, designed to cause fear and arousal in those who liked that sort of thing. She was prepared to follow through on her threats though, as Sherlock now knew.

She pulled the man away from the wall and hissed, “Get down on your knees.”  When the man dropped down Sherlock heard his knee joints creak and pop.  He wouldn’t be doing many more half-marathons. Irene leaned down behind the man, wound her arm around his neck in a tight lock and snarled, “You’re going to take every bit of pain without making a sound or I’ll stop immediately.  Do you understand?”

Sherlock’s breath hitched and stopped as he suddenly experienced a flashback to John’s iron grip around his own neck the other day.  John’s brute strength and capacity for aggression had never been in doubt, but until that day, Sherlock had only dreamt of being a recipient of that gift.  He tried not to think about it because it would do no good.  No good at all.  

Irene selected a long-handled wooden paddle with small holes drilled into the head.  She proceeded to walk around the cowering man who had now dropped to all fours, ensuring that he could see the paddle dangling down from her hand even as he kept his eyes cast down to the floor.  His breaths were short and his body was quivering with gooseflesh as it anticipated the punishment to come. She raised her arm and started thrashing his bottom, all the while spitting out insults at him.  The holes in the paddle made loud whistling sounds and left dotty patterns all over the pale skin, like a child’s potato print picture.  As she reached twenty strokes she paused, yanked his head back by his hair and said, “Give me a colour, boy”.  

“Green,” came the breathy reply.  

She stroked his alarmingly red cheeks and whispered, “Good boy, let’s change it up, since you’re so good at taking your punishment. The Nagaika, I think.”  She switched to a short, brown whip made of beautifully braided leather that tapered down to a flat, pointed tongue. The whip came down with a searing crack and made his back arch with pain as she proceeded to lay stripes across it.  “Is it painful, my pet?” she whispered.

“Yes, Mistress!”  

“Good pain or bad pain?”

“It’s good, Mistress,” he whined.   

“Colour?”

A beat of hesitation.  “Amber.”  

Irene nodded even though he couldn’t see her, and looked like she too could do with a breather.  Her face bore the high flush of exertion and her chest rose and fell rapidly.  She stroked his back lightly and pulled him up by his shoulders to sit him back on his heels. She moved to stroke his moist forehead as he looked up at her with glazed, adoring eyes.  

In his side room, Sherlock clenched his crossed thighs and absently rubbed his teeth with one knuckle.  

oooooo 

"Kate, will you see to Mr Noren? He's having a lie down at the moment," said Irene, dabbing her face with a tissue. "Has Mr Holmes left?"

"Yes he left about ten minutes ago. A bit rude, I thought, not to even wait to speak to you."

"Not to worry," smiled Irene. "He'll be back. I think I know what he likes."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing... Victoria Trevelyan, the original woman.

When Sherlock returned to Baker Street after his appointment in Belgravia, John was bustling around the flat, picking up the collection of demands, final demands and positively final demands which constituted their post. Money was no longer a problem for the flatmates; the cases were streaming in as Sherlock’s reputation and John’s blog readership grew.  But when John had been away for a while, and when they were too busy running around London cracking mysteries, bill-paying fell right down their list of priorities.  To be fair, it had never been one of Sherlock’s priorities.

“Are you alright?” John asked, taking in Sherlock’s pensive expression.

“Fine,” Sherlock replied immediately.  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason,” replied John in a clipped tone, deciding to drop it.

Sherlock’s phone sighed and John cast an irritated, side-long glance at it, his clenched jaw doing all the talking.  

_I take it you got what you needed from your visit today?_

Sherlock went into his bedroom and closed the door, knowing that John’s eyes were shooting narrow laser beams of suspicion through the wood.

_Thank you.   Most informative.  SH_

_Come again anytime.  We’ll have dinner._

_What makes you think there will be a next time? SH_

_I don’t think.  I know.   You’re much more than a big brain bound in an insensate body._

_If there’s a compliment in there, thank you.  SH_

_I like the brainy type. They always work so hard to sublimate their bodies’ base desires.  But even geniuses need release._

Sherlock blinked at the screen and cursed her. He couldn’t let the message go unanswered so he tapped out his reply after a pause which he knew would show his hand a little.

_You’re mistaking me for one of your pathetic, grovelling clients.  SH_

_I recognise a hungry man when I see one._

oooooo

Most people thought that Sherlock had an absolutely clean record so far as women were concerned.  His few friends were wary of prying, as if they thought he was keeping secrets deliberately – secrets of homosexuality or inexperience most likely.  It was ludicrous to think that he would give a damn what anyone thought of his identity or sexual history.  The dull truth was that no one had ever dared to ask him directly.  John had come closest, that first night at Angelo’s, but even he had only asked about his present status, to which Sherlock had truthfully replied.  He regretted the prickly and defensive way he had responded to John as he now realised that John would forever view him as unattainable and unavailable.  ‘Married to his work’ was now his official marital status, which was perfectly acceptable for the most part.    

Victoria Trevelyan had been two years ahead of Sherlock at Cambridge where she was reading politics, philosophy and economics and, according to Mycroft, was heading for a fast-track career as a government special advisor or political thought-leader.

She was waspish and cultured with a dark cynical wit.  She drank and smoked cigarettes and marijuana like a dropout but nonetheless could summon precise statistics and arcane facts, historical geekery like the type of pearl worn by Elizabeth I.  Her debating style was combative and confrontational, a fact which had not escaped the government recruiters who were encouraging her to join the civil service, but Victoria had an iconoclasm and sense of the absurd that didn’t sit well with the stiff, grey world of British institutions, and which Sherlock admired and applauded.  He found himself sitting often with her in the quad of their college, smoking and arguing and playing intellectual games.   They sparred on the big questions – freedom, politics, morality – topics that straddled science and philosophy, each of them pitting their natural positions against each other and enjoying the tussle of ideas.

“Wagner was morally compromised!  How can you listen to _Tristan und Isolde_?” Victoria exclaimed.

“How can _you_ deny its beauty? Do you really believe you have to be a morally good human being to create beautiful works of music?” scorned Sherlock. 

“Yes! There _has_ to be a connection between moral beauty and aesthetic beauty. _Kalon_ , as the ancient Greeks called it.  Wagner’s music is tainted by association with evil.  We know Hitler and Goebbels loved his music.  Wagner will forever be linked to the Final Solution.  Because of that the music _becomes_ less beautiful.” 

“Rubbish,” retorted Sherlock.  “Music is structured and measured.  We can quantify the effects on the body, the physiological responses.  Concordance and discordance. They affect the way in which sound works on the inner ear.  You don’t have to be able to read music or understand it.  Our brains judge harmonic language at a pre-cognitive, sensory level.  Wagner knew this - that harmonies and musical structures have a physical effect.  He was masterful at this technique.  His achievements are great; he doesn’t have to be a _good_ man as well.”

Speaking of beauty, Victoria was beautiful and had lots of admirers but, like Sherlock, wore her beauty carelessly, like an oversized jumper slipping off her shoulder.  Her make-up was either non-existent or excessive, almost goth, her hair scruffy and slept-in. Beauty wasn’t something that Sherlock usually noted.  For him beauty in a thing or a person was a simply another property, similar to shape and size.  He could observe it and appreciate it but, except in the areas of music or art, there was no physiological effect on him.  As for Victoria, a passionate feminist and acolyte of Simone de Beauvoir, she proclaimed, “Feminine beauty is a social construct.  I reject society’s stereotypes of beauty and sexual attractiveness.  I refuse to be controlled by other people’s expectations and assumptions of what I should look like.”

As it was, the whole of Cambridge was teeming with pretty, young, posh things.  As was often the case, youth itself - with its smooth, plump skin and clear, bright eyes - was what made most people appear beautiful and desirable, though not to Sherlock.  Not many of the horsey women paid the slightest bit of attention to Sherlock anyway, given as he was to casting irritated glares whenever he heard around him the nasal, plummy tones which a girl from the Home Counties learns from too much contact with the saddle when young.  As for the boys, they were mostly narcissists, zealots and exhibitionists, banded together in braying, testosterone-fuelled packs around an obnoxious alpha-male.  Sherlock hated them all and the feeling was mutual. It pleased him that Victoria couldn’t stand them either.  Then there were the geeks and emotionally-underdeveloped loners, palely loitering around the library trying to start conversations with her, thinking they might have a chance since they saw one of their own aligned with her.  She ignored them too.

So when Victoria gave Sherlock her back-handed compliments - “No flies on you kiddo.” “Not bad, for a fresher.” “Nice observation, junior.” – he lapped up the attention like a drunk.   His body, racing with hormones like most nineteen-year old males, was receptive to her touches. He didn’t think too hard about what his mind wanted or what it liked but he noted with interest the way his skin, temperature and heart rate responded to the contact of another warm body. He told himself that all physical experiences were invaluable data points.  In truth, resistance to her charms was impossible and fanciful. She was bold and demanding in the pursuit of her sexual pleasure and the skinny young chemistry student found himself pulled into her orbit.  She had developed her controlling and dominant instincts over her last few relationships.   That was who she was; that was what she needed.  Over three months of the summer term, Victoria led Sherlock down a rabbit hole of sexual exploration that was rough and kinky.  BDSM was a term they were vaguely aware of, but they were too self-absorbed to become part of any sort of community – they played their own way, made up their own rules.  They had no safe words, no discussions about boundaries. They had no fancy toys or equipment - they were students after all - but they improvised imaginatively with the things they had around them.

“So you believe the mind is the software that runs on the hardware of the brain?” teased Victoria. 

“Clearly. Even your ‘philosophers’ believe in scientific determinism but now they’re joined by neuroscientists. The key brain event is the firing of a nervous impulse in a neuron, and it obeys the classical laws of physics.  Benjamin Libet’s experiments have demonstrated that the brain activity bringing about the hand’s movement started several seconds before the individual consciously willed anything to happen.”  

“I can’t believe in a universe determined in this mechanistic fashion. Libet’s theories work for little decisions like moving a hand, but what about the tough decisions, like: is it better to choose a career in law rather than politics?  Your mind goes through conscious reasoning before the choice is made. Surely you of all people,” said Victoria, poking Sherlock in the chest, “would be the first to agree that we are independent of our biology?“

“We feel we choose but we don’t.  Take Charles Whitman.  He was a mild-mannered, law abiding bank teller and scout master in Austin, Texas. In 1966 he went on a sudden murderous rampage, killing six people including his wife.  After his execution, his brain was found to have harboured a nickel-sized tumour pressing on the amygdala, the region of the brain which regulates fear and aggression. Did he choose to kill, or was he just an unfortunate product of his biology?  Free will is an illusion,” said Sherlock.

“Right now, I think you need to be relieved of your will, free or otherwise,” drawled Victoria, pulling on Sherlock’s neck and bringing his face to hers for a deep and demanding snog. “Can your big brain predict what’s going to happen next?”

Sherlock’s mouth made the choice freely and predictably to open up to her insistent tongue.  His body went pliant at the touch of her lips on his and the sound of her voice.  His biology happily surrendered.

“Lie face down on the bed,” she commanded, her tone hard and urgent, resulting in immediate compliance from the lanky teenager.  She pulled off his t-shirt and his trousers slowly, as if she were undressing a huge doll with articulated joints. She took her time to admire and stroke his almost hairless, sinewy body.  As she kneaded and massaged his thighs and calves in a firm, milking action, she growled, “You know I could have any man on the campus, student or professor.  They all want to sleep with me.”

Sherlock knew this, of course.   She had a veritable smorgasbord of willing sexual partners to choose from.  

“But none of them... are as… delicious as you,” she whispered against his cheek as she lay her whole naked body on top of his and trapped him under her weight. He felt her warmth envelop him and he sighed out every bit of breath from his crushed lungs.  She kissed the back and sides of his neck, sending arousal straight to his groin which she ground into the mattress with her hips.  Small nips and teeth scrapes on his shoulders turned into bigger bites until she was clamping down hard on his flesh as if to tear it from his bones - vicious animal bites that were leaving large red marks all over his back and causing him to wriggle and gasp in pain. At times like this, at the receiving end of her aggression, Sherlock wondered if Victoria had a tumour pressing into _her_ amygdala.  His wriggling spurred her on and made her growl louder as her roving mouth searched for any area of unmarked skin to bite and gnash.  She ground her teeth hard into his buttocks which produced a soft howl from under her as he bucked his hips into the bed.  

“You’re quite unique. And perhaps one day, you will manage to gather up all those semi-coherent theories in that pretty head and do something impressive with your life.  In the meantime, you’re my plaything and I’m going to do some extraordinarily depraved things to you.  If that’s alright?”

She slipped her hand between his thighs and under his body, which he obligingly lifted up.  She touched his cock, smiled and said, “I take it that’s a yes. My pretty boy.” Sherlock nodded unnecessarily, as she ran her fingers all the way to the tip.  “ _My_ cock,” she confirmed through gritted teeth.

He moaned as she teased him, so gently and cruelly, torturing him with light pleasure, keeping him on the edge of forever, as she rocked her pelvis on his calf.

“Turn over now and let me smother you with my cunt.”

She sat on his face and mashed herself against his chin, lips and nose as she rode out her pleasure.  He could barely breathe as he tongued her dripping wet entrance, observing the slight smell and taste variations from previous days and matching the data to her diet and menstrual cycle.  She moaned loudly as she continued to rub her moistness all over his face.  “Fuck me with your tongue, Sherlock”. He duly obliged, doing his best to breathe whenever her movements allowed a tiny bit of airflow between her pubis and his nose.  He looked up at her and from that angle, she was like the goddess Aphrodite, rising majestically above him, a statue come alive from her plinth.  The deity read his mind and spoke. “That’s right. You stay there and worship my pussy now.” 

She reached back with her hands and pinched his sensitive nipples with her nails, causing him to arch with pleasure and groan into her wet folds.  As she approached her climax, she pressed her fingers onto her clitoris and tightened her thighs around his head.  With his head completely immobile and clamped by a vice of muscle and flesh, Sherlock could sense rather than hear the faint, muffled cries of her orgasm.  He felt her pulsing against his tongue which was engulfed in a slow gush of warm liquid. The female orgasm was a truly remarkable thing.      

Sex with Victoria usually involved some degree of pain being inflicted on Sherlock, with a hairbrush or hot candlewax or a doubled-up leather belt.  It hurt, sometimes so much that his vision started to go dark and he felt a sense of dislocation from his body and its blistering pain.  After she had taken what she needed, she would gather him into her arms and curl protectively around him, nestling his head into her cushiony-soft breasts.  She would stroke his hair and his back with a feather-like touch in a soothing, repetitive rhythm for ages, allowing him to drift either to sleep or into a deep hypnotic state, his thoughts twirling skywards like an untethered balloon.  It was in these moments that Sherlock felt his strongest feelings of attachment and sentiment towards Victoria.  Under these reassuring touches and in her warm cocoon, he felt at the centre of her world.  He experienced sensations that he had never felt with another human being before. Safe. Sheltered. Kept.   

It all ended abruptly when she graduated from Cambridge and left for India to do a gap-year which turned into a stint working for Sonia Gandhi. The intermittent postcards eventually petered out as her life got more interesting and exotic. She went on to become an economist at the World Bank.  The last Sherlock heard, she was running an international aid organisation in Pakistan.

It would be a long time before he would feel once again that he was the centre of someone else’s world.

oooooo

Sherlock’s reverie was interrupted by a text and he nearly dropped his mug of now-cold tea.

_Barcelona is full of louche distractions, especially with me here.  I stuffed a client into a latex sleep sack, wrapped him in gaffer tape and kept him there all afternoon.  Don’t worry, I checked him regularly.  Didn’t want a corpse on my hands, although it might have brought you over to see me._

Sherlock fought a muscle spasm that was threatening to stretch over his face in the shape of a grin.  That would have gone down like a cup of cold cod-liver oil with John, who had looked up and tutted in exasperation when the text message came in.

“That woman has certainly got her hooks into you,” he said drily.  “What _is_ it about her that fascinates you so?  I’ve never seen you like this with any…one.”

“I am not _fascinated_.  But I think she considers me… her plaything.”

“Her plaything?” started John.  “What… Why? Are you encouraging her, Sherlock?”

“I’m _hoping_ that it will lead me closer to the camera phone.  You don’t think I’ve forgotten about that, do you?”

“I thought Mycroft told you to butt out of that business.”

“Of course he did, that unctuous blob.  But there’s more behind this Adler woman.  I know he’s keeping something big from me and it involves her.”  Sherlock added, “Besides, she amuses me.”

“For God’s sake, Sherlock.  She drugged you and beat you!  That woman’s not to be trusted!”

“Don’t worry about it, John.  She and I are well-matched.  In the meantime, I’m taking the bait she’s offering.”

“Well let me know when I need to buy a hat, Mr Married to My Work,” said John, his voice like dry twigs on a frosty window pane.

That phrase again.  Nausea and regret filled up in Sherlock’s gut once again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those not familiar, it is common in Britain to say "shall I buy a hat?" when predicting an impending wedding. I believe it was Cilla Black who coined the phrase on the show Blind Date about 25 years ago. 
> 
> Earnest thanks once again to redbuttonhole for her invaluable ideas and writing advice, and to splix for her continued friendship and beta-reading.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thanks to my beta-reader, splix, for her advice, encouragement and friendship.

Barcelona was waking up, pulling demure petticoats over her licentious night-time display of flesh and donning her soigné daytime persona.  It was one of Irene’s favourite cities – lewd, vibrant, with the temperament of an artist, and a fierce stubbornness borne out of the Catalonian yearning for independence.

Along the wide avenue of Las Ramblas, the pale-faced clubbers were making their way home looking surprisingly sober.  Pickpockets, street performers, tourists and office-workers began their daily swarming pattern.  Stall-holders selling songbirds were hanging up their birdcages which, once their night-time covers were shucked off, unleashed a cacophony of symphonic trilling and chirping.   A crowd of well-to-do locals, dressed up to the nines for a wedding, slowly clicked up the grey stone steps of the town hall, their expensive scents trailing behind them.   Irene observed them from the window of her suite, noting how true it was that you could measure the GDP of a city by the walking pace of the locals.  Here, the slow perambulation of humanity confirmed that the economics of this city reflected its carefree reputation for partying and frolicking: a city that said “mañana” with a bare-shouldered shrug to the question of how she would pay for her excesses. 

“The Pilates teacher will be here in half an hour, Mistress.” Kate moved close to Irene at the window of their suite.

“Hmm, yes, I do need a bit of stretching out, after last night’s scene,” said Irene, rolling her shoulders backwards, and turning from the window to Kate to kiss her cheek. “Thank you for your help last night, my dear.”

oooooo

Whenever she was on tour in Europe, Irene and Kate staged at least one “ceremony” involving themselves and a few other mistresses, to which a limited number of trusted clients were invited to participate.  These ceremonies were meticulously scripted, choreographed and directed by Irene, and played out like hard-edged, theatrical poems - decadent scenes set to music and highly costumed. 

The one last night took place in a grand salon resembling the Hall of Herod from Gustave Moreau’s _Salome Dancing before Herod_ , with a high frescoed ceiling, rich tapestries and Belle Époque paintings of ermine-clad beauties hanging on the pale mint walls.   Mirrors in ornate gilt frames reflected the pulsing flames from candle-topped sconces.  The five mistresses, including Irene, were positioned on silk cushions on the floor, curled up in sleeping poses under heavy velvet robes.  They were all striking in their own way, each with a different look and colouring but all with their hair piled up in curls high on their heads.  Irene was wearing a floor-sweeping coat dress with plunging neckline in truffle-coloured starched organza, embellished with crystal beads at the cuffs, collar and hem.  Underneath the translucent shimmer, a burnished gold corset was laced tightly around her tiny torso and on her feet she wore towering, crystal-studded Alaia heels.  Kate, dressed in a diaphanous, silk Grecian-style dress, was on hand as the mistresses’ assistant, moving the players about on cues from Irene.  With Massenet’s _La Dernier Sommeil de la Vierge_ playing, the four submissives, all men, ranging from their late twenties to early fifties, knelt beside the cushions and gently caressed the mistresses to wakefulness.  When the women eventually rose from their “slumber”, they gathered the men into a tight circle, facing inwards, exposing the backs of their naked forms to the women.  Whilst Irene stood apart, the other four mistresses drummed on their backs and buttocks with short, thick sticks, in time to the rising tempo of the music.  When the bodies were sufficiently warmed up, the mistresses exchanged their sticks for tightly-plaited, single-tailed whips and slowly circled the huddled, trembling bodies in the middle of the room, calling to mind a Wiccan ritual.  It was the ritualistic element that led to these events being known as ceremonies.  They were a far cry from the usual dungeon scene.  The participants were elevated into a spiritual realm, as both the dominants and the submissives experienced altered states.

The women flicked their whips on Irene’s command, slicing the air with their cracks at the start of each musical phrase.  Each time, the leather found its surface on the exposed backs.  If any of the men whimpered or hunched his body to recoil from the furious sting of the whip Irene would say in a sharp voice, “Cállate! Arriba!”   The whips continued to crack, unleashing their great length on the pale softness of bare skin.  “Un otro,” commanded the conductress, again and again and again, as the scene played out to the beat of her skilful baton in the fevered atmosphere of the chamber.

At some point, Kate led into the room, in shuffling steps, an exquisitely beautiful female submissive, mummified from chest to ankles in layers of sheer black chiffon held in place by a long string of pearls looping around her neck, crossing over her breasts, around her waist and trailing down to the floor behind her feet.  When she was laid on the floor, like a sacrificial virgin on a stone altar, Irene cut open the chiffon with a blade and peeled back the chiffon.  All that remained to clothe her were the pearls.  Two of the dominatrices fell upon her, dragging the pearly strings over her most sensitive parts.  They touched her with precision, running their fingers all over her writhing body and into every fold and orifice.  Their tongues lapped and sucked at her nipples and dragged up and down her body leaving snaking, wet trails all over her.  They dipped fingers into her oozing sex and circled her labia with feather-light touches.  They nipped and kissed her wrists all the way up her arms, up her throbbing neck and to her earlobes.  They plucked, strummed and played her like a lute; one which was humming and vibrating with melodious song.  The gentle but judicious ministrations continued over every part of her delicate, pliant body until she was sobbing out incoherently in grateful pleasure, her howls resonating around the room, her face streaked with black tears. 

The other two dominatrices had arranged the men on their knees in a row before the “deflowered virgin” to watch.  On the backs of two of the men, the women were carefully threading long needles with black feather tips in row upon row on their backs.  Their work was as meticulous and beautiful as the embroidery on a fine couture gown. When their artistry was finished and the skin of each man had been pierced with fifty-odd needles laid flat in a neat and precise formation, their backs had been transformed to resemble black feathery wings. 

“Beautiful,” murmured Irene, carefully stroking the feathers and the perforated skin beneath each one. “Such exquisite work.  Such craftsmanship.  Two black ravens, trained to do my bidding. Kate, take some photographs my birds before we cage them for the night.”  

Irene instructed the women to gather up in their fingers the copious liquid running out from between the legs of the “virgin girl” and offer it to the men, who licked and sucked the proffered fingers like bees on nectar.  Their faces were radiant.

oooooo

“I think Señor Loeches will be particularly keen that those pictures you took of him looking like a winged creature do not get out.  I’ll be sure to remind him when I congratulate him on his appointment to the European Parliament.”

“You were wonderful,” said Kate.  “Everything about last night was perfect, down to the pattern of lashes on the backs of the subs.  I was just wondering,” she shyly asked, “if you could single-tail me like that sometime soon.  It was just so...” 

Irene gave her a tired smile and shushed Kate with a finger to her lips. “I know.  And I know you’re feeling a bit neglected.  You’ve been taking such good care of me as well.  What would I do without you, my darling?” Irene embraced her and rested her head on Kate’s shoulder.

“No, it’s fine, I understand totally, Mistress,” said Kate hurriedly.  “We’ve been so busy lately, and you’ve been working yourself to the bone.  I just meant…”

“I promise you,” whispered Irene urgently, “that I will make it up to you.  I want you to know that everything I’m doing, I’m doing for us, for our future.  You know that don’t you? You trust me?”

“Of course I do, Mistress,” said Kate, frowning at Irene’s earnest tone. “Tell me what you need. Whatever it is, let me help you.  I – it just worries me, to see you run yourself ragged, when I don’t know the reason.” 

“It’s for your own safety.  I need to keep you safe.  So I just need you to trust me.  Okay, my love?”

 “Yes, Mistress,” said Kate, with a sense of foreboding.

“Well, I’m drained,” sighed Irene. 

During these trips abroad, where her arrival was billed with great fanfare in the BDSM community, she endured a punishing schedule of ten to twelve sessions per week, as well as at least one ceremony.  This was far more than the seven or eight sessions a week she did at home, although she did usually entertain her London-based clients for dinner or shopping sessions, which were time-consuming and tiresome in their own way. Having to maintain her domme persona all day long was exhausting. This work had started out as a way of her getting what she needed; control over others in all its various forms was her tonic.   When someone gave up their secret self, made themselves vulnerable for her, she felt a surge of power in her veins.  The more attenuated their force, the more hers became charged with vitality.  When she was deep in a scene, sounds and colours became more vivid, odours more intense, her skin became sensitive to the slightest pressure. The outside world shrank to nothing; only the interior world became real: the world in which she was an omnipotent goddess, and everything and everyone was under her control.  It was intoxicating.  

Becoming a pro-domme seemed like the fulfilment of her destiny - she spanked, whipped, flogged and caned people for money! She abused them verbally and physically, walking all over them, literally and metaphorically.  She used knives and needles on her submissives, having learned how to perform bloodplay safely.  She performed temperature play with hot wax and frozen metal bars. She chained clients on St Andrew’s Crosses, where they looked so vulnerable and penitent, or sucked them into vertically mounted vac-beds, and performed water bondage on them.    She tortured cocks and balls by hanging weights on them and abrading them with sandpaper. She became an expert at kinbaku and rigging so she could contort her subjects into beautiful shapes and suspend them high in the air whilst she administered electric shocks with a cattle prod.  She made heterosexual men gag on her huge strap-on dildo and made them beg her to fuck them in the arse. Nipples were shown no mercy and she loved ripping off clothes pegs or nipple clamps just to hear the shrieks of pain and strings of curses.  She catered to the most bizarre fetishes just because it was fun to see how far she could push a human being into total surrender. She loved it and loved it and loved it, until all at once she didn’t.   It had started to feel too much like a job.  She despised some of the clients too - the hypocrites, the outwardly priggish who were invariably the most depraved.  

She used up all her dominant fire on her clients, leaving only the barest of glowing embers for her relationship with Kate.  Both she and Kate missed the energy that they used to enjoy in their play, if they even found time to play. She needed to stop.  She couldn’t bear the thought of being a professional dominatrix into her dotage.  There were some pro-dommes in their sixties or older but she considered that to be infinitely tragic.  At the moment she was at the top of her game; it was unthinkable to imagine her operating at the B or C level of the pro-domme ecology. She wanted to retire, the sooner the better.    She and Kate and maybe some of her other girls would live out on a remote ranch in America and ride horses.  The open space would free her tired old soul. She had worked out a plan of how she might be able to do it. All she needed to do was to keep on mining her well-connected clients for information and to send it to Jim Moriarty. 

“Have you spoken to Annalise today?  Any calls I need to respond to?” Irene asked.  She usually got Kate or Annalise, her other assistant, to respond to the text messages and emails, posing as herself.  She couldn’t get out of the telephone or Skype calls unfortunately, but it was important to start the pre-work with the client long before they came for a session.  The more she could build up the bond of trust and the feverish anticipation, the more she could secure their craven devotion. They would become easy prey.  

“Mr Ballantyne, who works at the British consulate.  He’s into sploshing and wellies, apparently.  Custard, jelly, baked beans,” smirked Kate. “I’d say it’s a fair bet he has issues with his boarding school days.”

“Perfect,” smiled Irene.  “We’ll give him the lot.  And won’t he be ashamed if others could see him lying in a bath of goo whilst I kick his erection with the tip of my Hunter wellies?  What secrets might he reveal?”

These days, when doing due diligence on a new client, she instructed Kate and Annalise to accept only those clients with connections to government or the aristocracy.  How rich or powerful was less important than whether they might have information that was of value: valuable enough to bring down a nation, preferably.  This type of power play was now her business. And any of these clients could be her ticket out of this life. 

She would periodically send Jim pieces of information.  He would tell her how much mileage she could get out of each one. The royal pictures had been a tease. To draw out the Holmes brothers, Jim said. To give Irene a chance to start playing with Sherlock. In the meantime she could be very patient, likening herself to a big game hunter on a nighttime stakeout. She could play a long game. Games after all, were her speciality: moves and countermoves. 

oooooo

_How do you feel about branding?_

_Useful on a corpse.  SH_

_It looked painful, but he bore it stoically.  The smell of barbecued flesh was delicious._

_Consensual I hope.  We wouldn’t want you to be branded a criminal, Miss Adler.  SH_

_He begged me for it. Now he has my initials for life on his hip. How high is your pain threshold, I wonder?_

_Does your slave have one of those too? SH_

_Kate has a barcode tattoo.  You can see it if you ask us nicely._

_Interesting. So she’s the tin of beans in your Tesco.   SH_

_Please. Fortnums._

  
Irene quickly switched off her screen when she felt Kate waking and moving next to her on the bed. 

“Texting Mr Holmes again?” Kate asked, a hint of irritation creeping into her sleepy voice.

“Indeed.”

“May I ask, Mistress,” ventured Kate, “what you’re doing?  I mean, he’s not a client.  So what is he … to you?”

“You sound jealous,” observed Irene, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’m just curious,” persisted Kate, aware that her probing could be construed as impertinence.  “You’re texting him a lot, and you get a look on your face when …”

“I told you,” snapped Irene.  “I told you, you need to trust me.  I need him for my plans. I’m just... reeling him in.”

“Oh, I see,” said Kate quietly.

“Now be a good girl and give me a tongue bath between my legs,” said Irene with a sigh and a smile, reaching for her favourite crop.

“Oh yes, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and subscribing. Look out for a short Christmas chapter which I'll be posting in a few days.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas mushiness.

Sherlock shook out the Sunday papers stuffed with superfluous supplements and huffed in exasperation as a stack of junk fell out of the middle of the magazine.  Charity appeals, mail-order catalogues and god-knew what else, all augmented in volume by the seasonal onslaught of consumerism and retail gluttony.  He picked up the thick John Lewis Christmas gift catalogue to flick through desultorily. Some part of his brain remembered John’s instruction to buy a gift for Mrs Hudson and his brother.  John said he would get gifts for Molly and Lestrade - thank goodness but _why_?  Sherlock had thrown a mini-tantrum protesting that he was not prepared to participate in an utterly fatuous yuletide exchange of unwanted trinkets, especially not with his brother who deserved and expected nothing from Sherlock. John had fixed Sherlock with an adamantine gaze that brooked no argument and said “Just do it, Sherlock,” such that Sherlock inexplicably found himself silenced.  Since it was just over a week until Christmas he thought he had better get cracking.

He flicked through and paused at the section of the catalogue entitled “For the Gadget Lover.”  Cameras, tablets, watches, speakers.  Clearly not suitable for either Mrs Hudson or Mycroft but he couldn’t help himself being drawn to expensive and finely crafted timepieces.  Who wore an expensive watch these days? Only those pompous, status-driven idiots in the City, and certainly no ordinary person under thirty - they all used their phones to tell the time. Still, he’d always been fascinated with the niche skill of horology which produced these exquisite instruments of science wrapped in artistry - a swan song to mechanical excellence in a digital age.

The section entitled “For the Perfect Hostess” had a couple of elaborate teapots and tiered cake stands that would do for Mrs Hudson. Under “For the Healthy Eater” he saw a juicer which made him grin as he imagined giving it to Mycroft and watching his confused expression.

_“What do you expect me to do with that, Sherlock?”_

_“Oh you know. I thought I’d help you with your New Year’s resolution to put nothing but raw, highly-fibrous, cleansing, pure goodness into the temple of your body. I hear wheatgrass is very good combined with beetroot and aloe vera.”_   He sniggered as he dog-eared the page.

Oh, what about John? Shouldn’t he get a present for John? Yes, of course, he should, he must. What though?  Fancy headphones? No John seemed happy to listen to Sherlock’s music these days and would frankly look silly in a chunky noise-cancelling headset.  Besides, he wouldn’t be able to hear Sherlock calling to him.  A new coat? Well he certainly needed one but he had been quite vehemently opposed Sherlock trying to dress him in the past.  Strangely Sherlock thought he wouldn’t mind taking sartorial direction from John at all, though from Sherlock’s own wardrobe obviously. Breadmaker? Well, he was always complaining about running out of bread… No! Stupid! What was he thinking? John was – well, he was John.  And that meant - something. He had to think long and carefully to find a special and unique gift for John; the bloody John Lewis catalogue would not do at all.

oooooo

_Meet me at Tate Modern tonight, 6pm, Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition._

“54,” muttered John, under his breath. Sherlock ignored him.

_It’s important.  Please._

_Fine.  SH_

oooooo

The exhibition was in a small - by Tate Modern standards - gallery, tucked away behind several large high-ceilinged rooms.  It was almost empty as it was nearly closing time. The monochrome photographs hung in black frames arranged in a single row that snaked latitudinally around the room.  Androgynous faces stared out with raw expressions. Dancers’ bodies were posed to reflect a sculpted quality. Many photographs were of celebrities that looked vaguely familiar to Sherlock. Several were self- portraits of Robert Mapplethorpe himself - his wild, haunting eyes glaring at the viewer out from under a mop of unkempt, dark curls with often a cigarette hanging from sinful-looking lips. 

"He reminds me of someone. Can't think who." The familiar cadence of Irene's voice accompanied the click of her heels. "Hello, Mr Holmes."

"Please, I think we can move to first names at this point, don't you, Irene?" said Sherlock as he turned to the direction of the voice.

"As you wish." Her perfume hit his nostrils and he couldn't help reeling a little at the sight of her, all pale and dark like the pictures in the gallery, punctuated by the intense red of her lips and nails.  When she looked at him, it was as if she knew him, in some undefinable way.  It unsettled him. He shook off her gaze and went back to inspecting the photograph of the back of a man or woman – no, definitely a woman, but with a very muscular torso, diminishing her femininity - bound with black tape that crossed her naked back and buttocks.

She circled him slowly, looking over the length of him and stopped next to him to follow his line of sight.

"Do you like what you see?"

"They are certainly - arresting images. If you like that sort of thing."

"That is Lisa Lyons, his muse and girlfriend.  She was the first World Women’s Body Building Champion.”

“That explains why she looks so - masculine,” said Sherlock.

“Mapplethorpe was fascinated with bondage.”

“And sex generally it would seem.  Rather predictable for an artist in the 60’s in New York.”

“If it was just sex these photographs wouldn’t be very interesting. It’s the way they show vulnerability and visceral sensuality.  This is art as a dark romance."

She pulled him by his arm and walked him over to a self-portrait of the photographer: probably the most provocative of the collection. The image mirrored the traditional pose of the devil with curved back, whip-forming tail, raised elbow, bent knee and a shadow on the wall behind. His back and buttocks faced outwards and his head was twisted round his shoulder to peer at the viewer with a demonic grin. He wore nothing but leather chaps, placidly demonstrating the presence of a whip in his arse.

"Look at him. The epitome of the rebel, the non-conformist, the iconoclast. When I see this picture, I am reminded of you."

"You think of me when you see a rock ‘n roll, cross-dressing, celebrity snapper posing as the devil with a bull-whip stuck in his anus?”

Irene simply raised her eyebrow enigmatically. “Let me get to the point, Sherlock. I need a favour from you.”

“What makes you think…”

“I need to disappear for a little while.  To do that, I need to pretend that I’m dead. You will need to identify a body as mine.”

“Why get me to do it? Why not - I don’t know - Kate?”

“Kate is out of the country, out of harm’s way. I need you to do it so that people believe it.  Don’t worry, the DNA and dental records are being taken care of.  But you need to make the first ID.”

“Who are you running away from?”

“Not your concern.  And you couldn’t help me with them anyway.”

“What makes you think I have any interest in helping you?”

“Think of me as your client. I’ll leave you   my camera-phone in return. Of course you won’t be able to get into it.  And you will do the ID because you do have an interest in me.”

Sherlock pondered this.  As much as he wanted to deny it, she was right - there was something about her that did intrigue him.  And if she was willing to give up her camera-phone, that seemed a fairly neat quid pro quo, _if_ she could be trusted. It couldn’t be that hard to break her password 

“You see, Sherlock, you’re not the only one who can deduce people. Whilst you may deduce their present circumstances I am rather skilled at deducing their desires – quite useful in my profession.”

“And, in your professional opinion, what is it that I desire exactly?” sneered Sherlock.

“You’re hungry. You’re a genius looking for an outlet, somewhere to surrender control and free yourself from the grip of your mind.  That outlet could be sexual but you won’t give up control of your body to just anyone, will you?  Tell me, who  would you allow to touch you?”

“Wrong question, Irene, especially if you’re trying to persuade me to help you,” remarked Sherlock.  There was no one he wanted to touch him, except perhaps …

“No question is wrong if it reveals the truth,” parried Irene.

The silence echoed loudly in the empty gallery.

“I bet you like it when Dr Watson gives you orders.”

“I don’t obey John’s orders.”

“Don’t you?”

“John does whatever I ask.”

“He indulges you because he adores you,” whispered Irene as she moved close to press up firmly against Sherlock’s back.  “But when you cross one of his lines, I bet he puts his foot down.  And you listen, and you obey. ”

Sherlock cleared his throat and moved away from her distracting smell and touch. “Thank you.  When I want insight into my psyche, which will be never, I don’t think a sex-worker will be my first port of call.”

“You’ll hear from me, Sherlock.  Very soon.  And thank you.” Irene kissed her fingers and pressed them against Sherlock’s lips, before departing swiftly, leaving him momentarily stunned.  It had been a long time since his mouth had made contact with another living person.     

oooooo

“I meant to give you your gift last night when you got back from the morgue but you, er, looked like you didn’t want to be disturbed,” said John handing over a small parcel. “It’s not much.  You’re a hard person to buy for, within a modest budget I mean.”

“Thank you, John.”  Sherlock unwrapped a pair of leather gloves that looked identical to his own.

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,” laughed John, “but they’re touchscreen gloves.  I know how you like to keep your armour on, even when you’re using your phone.”

“Thanks, very useful.  I’ve got something for you too.”  Sherlock reached into his armoire and took out a small rectangular box.  “I...hope you… like it.”

“Heavy,” noted John as he hefted the box and proceeded to open it.  “They’re… teaspoons?”

The four metal spoons looked rough and handmade, and each had a date and some letters engraved on them.

“They are spoons made from aluminium shrapnel extracted by doctors at a Médecins sans Frontières hospital in Lashkargah, Helmand province.  The date is when the incendiary device was detonated, as far as is possible to ascertain from the casualties’ reports.”

John fingered the tiny grooves - _June 2009. Peacebomb, made in Afghanistan._

John swallowed, barely able to speak as his throat constricted and he blinked at the overwhelming images that flashed past his eyes in the slideshow reel of his mind. “Sherlock - that’s… just. Wow.  Sorry. I’m a bit lost for words.”

“And of course, you can make my tea with them,” quipped Sherlock.  He was pleased John seemed moved by his gift but maybe it was too much? The spoons weren’t very expensive but perhaps he shouldn’t have gone for something so – personal.  

“Yes, of course,” laughed John.  “Thank you. That’s the most thoughtful - and perfect - present, yeah, I’ve ever had. And all I got you was a pair of crappy gloves.  Sorry.  I’d better pull out all the stops for your birthday!”

Sherlock stared in wonderment at his flatmate.  This modest man had no idea of the value of the gift he’d already given Sherlock in barely a year of their friendship.  Brave, kind and loyal to a fault, he had satisfied a need that Sherlock didn’t even realise he had.  Like seeing a crocus blooming in the snow, or a pool of sunlight illuminating heretofore unseen features of a painting, or hearing an unusual musical phrase with a beautiful dissonant surprise.  The gift was the knowledge that he was no longer alone.  John would be there, and that made him feel – complete. The genius detective could solve the banking crisis, cure cancer, unravel the mysteries of the deep ocean, and he still wouldn’t have done enough to deserve John Watson.  He wanted to say so much, but instead he said, “Merry Christmas, John.”

“Merry Christmas, Sherlock.”   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can actually buy the spoons, made from shrapnel, from a company called Article 22. They make other beautiful jewellery, all made from bombs dropped during the Vietnam war. 
> 
> With heartfelt thanks to splix and redbuttonhole as always. Merry Christmas to all and thank you for reading so far. I hope to resume chapters in the new year.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t always be the Woman. Sometimes I’m just Irene.”

Sherlock stood in his bedroom with John by his side, both men staring at Irene, asleep in Sherlock’s bed.  John kept pinging glances between Sherlock and the sleeping woman, his manner asking _now what do we do?_

“So, should we wake her?” asked John.

“Not yet, let her sleep,” answered Sherlock in a low voice.  “I’ll join you in the other room in a minute,” he said as he pushed John out of his room and shut the door. 

Taking care not to wake her with his footsteps, he slowly turned and stepped around his bedroom, noting a small leather satchel on the floor by his wardrobe and a pair of flat ankle boots.  A small pile of clothes – sweatshirt, thin parka, leggings, socks and knickers - lay on the floor.  He picked up the leggings, held them out and sniffed them.  They were grubby and smelt of sweat and train stations.  The hooded parka was streaked with dirt and had a similar unwashed odour.  He poked around in the bag which contained a fake passport in the name of Kathleen Jones, a wad of cash, a few toiletries and a pair of socks.  There was also a notebook with scribbled notes and what appeared to be telephone numbers.  There was no weapon to be found, except for a small Swiss army knife.

“What have you been up to, Woman?” he mumbled to himself.

The duvet rustled and all at once Irene thrashed and sat up, eyes unfocussed and wild with fear, darting around the room in confusion.  Sherlock remained very still while he observed her intently, allowing her a few minutes to regain full consciousness and recognition of her surroundings.  She was breathing rapidly, but she soon relaxed when she took in the familiar face of the detective, and sagged back on the bed in relief although the terror had not left her completely.  She looked thoroughly exhausted.

“You’re safe,” said Sherlock softly.

She closed her eyes and he could see that she was shivering, even though it was quite warm in the room.  He sat on the edge of the bed and peered at her, taking in her ragged features and downturned mouth.

“You need more rest.  Go back to sleep.”  He rose and shut the door quietly behind him.  Whatever her story, it could wait until later.

John raised his eyebrows at him quizzically as he entered the sitting room. 

“She’s on the run,” said Sherlock in response to John’s silent question. “She’s been keeping a low profile under an assumed identity.  Probably travelled through Europe by train with barely a change of clothes.  Seems a bit traumatised.  A far cry from the high-maintenance femme fatale we knew in Belgravia.  How the mighty have fallen.”

“Who do you think she’s running from? The CIA, our secret service?”

“Probably organisations that are much shadier.  She had the CIA and my brother after her before but she didn’t resort to this subterfuge then.  Most likely she’s in _real_ trouble now.” Sherlock smiled grimly.  “She looks like she hasn’t slept in days.  We’ll leave her alone for now and let her open up to us when she’s ready.”

“Right,” nodded John.  “I’m visiting Harry this afternoon and staying overnight, remember?  Will you be all right until I’m back tomorrow?”

“Of course, John.  Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“I don’t trust that woman.  Don’t you let your guard down around her,” warned John. “I know her type.  She’ll wrap you round her little finger.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes a little.  “She’s unarmed, John, and she’s on our turf now.  But thank you for your concern.  I’ll be _fine_.”  In answer to John’s unabated anxiety, he added, “I won’t start to question her about anything of importance until you return, okay?” It seemed ridiculous that John needed to be on hand to tie him to the metaphorical mast lest he be lured by the Siren’s song, but Sherlock himself acknowledged that his previous encounters with Irene had thrown him – off-balance. 

“But what about the people who are after her?  We’ve had violent men with guns in our flat before because of her, remember?  And that was just when they thought we had her phone!  If they knew she was here, actually… _here_ ,” he jabbed his finger downwards in emphasis. “I don’t like the thought of you trying to get between them and her.  Maybe I should stay.”

“John, your sister is in hospital.  You should go. I’ll be just fine, and if someone does try to breach our walls, I’ll be sure to call Lestrade.  But leave your gun, just in case.”

John didn’t look very reassured but Sherlock could tell he was wavering.

“Besides, I need to get to the bottom of why the Woman is here.  To do that, I need her to trust me completely.  You and she have a somewhat chequered history and she’s unlikely to let down her defences if you’re present.”

John frowned in bafflement.  “Chequered history? Me and her? What about you? It was _you_ she tried to… Wait, hang on. I mean, I know she kept sending you texts but… have you been seeing…? Have you _seen_ her more times than I have?  Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?”

Sherlock sighed.  As usual, John chose to be perceptive at the most curious moments. This really wasn’t the right time to tell John about his meetings with Irene.  John would have too many questions and Sherlock wasn’t sure he had all the answers. 

“Sherlock?” persisted John with a needling glint in his eyes.  Sherlock felt a totally irrational impulse to tell the truth.

“I have corresponded with her on occasion.”

“And? What does that mean?”

“She and I are on… cordial terms.”

“ _Cordial_?  For you to say that means you’re practically best mates, or… lovers!” John grimaced at the last word.

“Don’t be ridiculous, John,” laughed Sherlock, taken aback by John’s vehemence.  “I’ve just met her a few times. She’s got an interesting angle, and her motives are surprisingly hard to read, even for me, I’ll admit.  I concluded that I needed to gather much more data so…”

He stopped when he suddenly took stock of John’s wintry expression.  _Fuck_.

“A few times,” nodded John. “ _I’ve_ only met her twice, and the second time, you were hiding behind a wall apparently.  So you have met up with her on other… occasions, hmm?  Where were these meetings?  And what were you doing, exactly?” he asked casually.

“For God’s sake, what does it matter?” exploded Sherlock with teenage truculence.  “Why do you care anyway? You’re not my nursemaid! Do I have to tell you everything that I do, _with_ everyone?”

A long pause.

“No.  Of course you don’t, Sherlock.  It’s none of my business.” John nodded, sniffed and turned to leave.  “See you tomorrow.”

Sherlock stared after John, filled with mute anguish at the hurt in John’s voice.  John’s signature sniff and nod were all the confirmation he needed that he’d said something very not-good.   

oooooo

It was late evening when he heard the light click on in the bathroom and the sound of the toilet being flushed.  Irene sidled out of the bedroom, wearing Sherlock’s blue dressing-gown over a pale green jumper of his which he had never worn.  There was something incongruous about a barely dressed woman emerging from his bedroom, but it was oddly fitting that she was a client/fugitive rather than an invited guest.   She still looked tired but no longer frightened.  She smiled tightly at Sherlock and he nodded in acknowledgement.

“Thanks for letting me sleep.”

“How long had it been since you slept?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Days,” she sighed, flopping down into John’s chair opposite Sherlock.  He continued to study her gaunt face, so pale it was almost a light source, like a backlit screen, and chose to hold back on asking anything too probing, as he’d promised John. 

“There are some leftovers in the kitchen.  I hope you like Persian.” He got up to heat up the food as she murmured her thanks and sat down at the table.  Leaning against the countertop, Sherlock watched her fingers tear nimbly into the flatbread and gouge a crater from the hoummus.  The skin on her hands was dry as parchment and her nails were unvarnished and jagged like piranhas’ teeth. 

Irene chewed in silence, jumping and starting at loud noises from the street.  She was like a stray cat, on guard for threats invisible to less sensitive creatures, quick to complete a necessary foray into the lamplight before disappearing into the safety of shadows.  Sherlock observing her flickering eye movements underneath heavy, tired lids.  

“Who are you afraid of, Irene?” he asked.  “I can help.”

“I don’t think you can,“ she sighed.  “There are some forces out there that are beyond even the powers of the great Sherlock Holmes.” She regarded him intently while he took in this slight.  “I need my phone back.  I _need_ it, Sherlock.  Please.”

“Just a week after you faked your death you told John you made a mistake and you needed your phone back then.  Straight after that meeting I found the CIA in my flat threatening Mrs Hudson with a gun.  They’ve gone quiet since then, and you haven’t made any further attempt to persuade me in the last few months to return it to you.  Why now? Where have you been since then? Have you been running and hiding all this time?”  He knew the answer to that but he wanted to see her reaction.

She twitched and refused to meet his eyes.

“If it’s the CIA then I can get my brother to …”

“Dammit, Sherlock! Forget the CIA! They’re the ones that have abandoned me to my fate!” She bit her lip and closed her eyes.  She opened them and displayed her tears openly.  “I need what’s on the phone.”

“Irene, let’s talk about that tomorrow, when you’re feeling more rested and less – emotional.”

“Jesus!” Like a sword being drawn from its sheath she rose in one swift motion, pushed the chair back with a clatter and staggered into the sitting room, wringing her hands and fuming impotently. As she paced around the room, a sudden bang burst out from the street.  Like a rabbit into its burrow, she darted down between the coffee table and the sofa, crouching into a tight ball and sheltering her head under her thin arms.

Sherlock gaped in alarm at the shaking, cowering creature on the floor.  “It’s all right, it’s just a motorcycle backfiring,” he said gently and moved slowly to her.  “It’s okay, Irene.  You’re safe.”

He’d seen John react like this before to loud noises but only when he’d been startled from sleep.  The ex-soldier’s highly refined set of quick-response reflexes would trigger a fireball of adrenaline, jamming up his system.  He would tumble from the sofa into a combat-ready position and Sherlock would see fear and shock sparkling in his blue eyes.  With time, reality would reassert itself and, with each swallow, his nausea would recede and his heart rate would change down from avian to human.  Sherlock once tried to go to him to place a reassuring hand on the broad slab of his back as John sat with his head cradled in sweaty palms, but that had been clearly rebuffed with a crackly “I’m fine”.  Sherlock understood.  John would be fine, once the embarrassment of being observed had passed.  

However, this situation was different.  Irene was not fine.  Sherlock was never good with doling out comfort and joy but he’d seen John do it to others, particularly women.  Like when Sarah had been nearly killed by the Black Lotus gang.  He tried patting Irene’s back uncertainly and felt the quick percussive rhythm under stiff muscles.  He moved closer to crouch next to her and stroked her tentatively, trying to soothe her body into uncurling itself.  Finally, he sat on the floor beside her and gave in to an embrace, wrapping his arms all around the small woman.  It surprised him that this simple physical act, the circling and pressing of limbs, the exchange of body heat, could provide such welcome succour, for Irene – and also, for Sherlock himself.  He must have deleted this sensation; there was no point to it, yet, it was undeniably - snug, pleasurable even. 

Irene responded by shifting her weight against him, nuzzling her head into his chest.  Soft sea sponges of her warm breath brushed against his breastbone. Sherlock felt her panic subside and her body gradually relax into his.   

“There now. Where’s the cool dominatrix who’s always in control?” he said with conjured lightness. He tried to release her and slip his arms away but she gripped his shirt with both hands to hold him close as she spoke into his collarbone with weary ferocity.

“I can’t always be the Woman.  Sometimes I’m just Irene.”  

They sat there for a long time, Sherlock just holding up the heavy weight of her inertia.  Sometimes, his fingers surprised him by straying idly into her hair.  He felt odd, for the second time that day. 

Eventually she looked up and said, “I think I’ll go back to bed, that is - if you don’t mind me taking your bed again.”

“Of course not.”

“You can join me if you like.  Don’t worry.  I’ll keep to my side.  Unless you’d prefer if I didn’t.” The raised eyebrow and coy, miniature smile affirmed that the indelible character of the Woman, whilst diminished, remained assuredly present in Irene.

“No,” he replied a little too firmly.  “I’ll stay in here. You should…erm… rest.”

“You’re probably right.  I need to get more sleep and tomorrow I’ll be back to my old self.  Thank you… for dinner and… you know -“

“Don’t mention it.” And he really meant it. He helped her off the floor and spent the rest of the night on the sofa in his Mind Palace.   First he came up with several possibilities for the identity of Irene’s pursuers but decided he needed more data, which he resolved to obtain either from Irene herself or from more of his own research.  Then he plundered the deepest recesses of his memory to identify the sensation which he thought could most suitably be described as Protectiveness, but his brain failed to supply a reasonable explanation for why he would feel that towards Irene.  Finally he thought about John’s reaction to his perfectly innocuous revelation that he’d been meeting and corresponding with Irene.  He went over the conversation several times, attempting to create an algorithm to process the meaning of each word-nuance-body language formula against possible menu selections which he posited thus: 

_He’s worried about leaving me alone with Irene given how violently she dealt with me at our first meeting._

_He feels left out that I went to meet Irene without taking him with me._

_He’s annoyed that I saw Irene_ _without seeking his permission in advance_. 

_He thinks I’m hiding an emotional attachment from him._

_He thinks I have had other attachments with other people that I have not shared with him._

_He thinks I don’t trust him._

_He’s disappointed in me._

_He thinks I’m a bad friend._

Too many possibilities, not enough certitude. With increasing frustration, he concluded that the hardware lacked the program to read this type of data.

*

The next morning, Irene seemed to have regained much of her spry swagger.  She breezed through the kitchen, acting as though she owned the place, and owned the silk robe which she was still inhabiting.   It was remarkable that the items of clothing that looked good on Sherlock also looked good on her, even though both his coat and his dressing gown were about five sizes too big for her.   He reasoned that it was because they had similar colouring.  She needed to make some calls she said, to get some of her things sent over.  Sherlock handed over his phone for her to use.  She rolled her eyes impatiently but took it without comment.  A suitcase was delivered to the flat in the late morning with clothes, toiletries and a mobile phone but she stayed in Sherlock’s dressing gown after her shower, seeming in no hurry to get into her own clothes.

“How long do you think she’s planning to stay?” hissed John when he came back and saw the overnight bag in the hall. 

“Let’s find out.  But go easy, John.  She seemed rather… out of sorts… last night.”

“That’s good, yeah? You like it when interviewees are rattled.  Exposes their weaknesses, right?”

“Right.”  

John seemed to have gotten over his dismay, or whatever it was, at Sherlock the previous day.  However, during the course of that afternoon, Irene impressed Sherlock by entering a false code in the fake phone, and Sherlock impressed Irene by deciphering the phone message at lightning speed, and John’s frostiness was back, like autumn leaves that had been swept painstakingly into neat piles blowing back over the drive at one strong gust.

oooooo

“Sorry about dinner,” intoned Sherlock, his voice like a splintering iceberg.  He strode into the hallway of his brother’s house to get his coat and to leave Mycroft to deal with Irene.  The relief at solving the puzzle had done nothing to soak up the black oil spill of his anger.  He was furious at himself.  How could he have been so thoroughly played by this scheming trickster?

“Sherlock!” cried Irene, as she came running after him.  “Don’t go.  Please.  I’m truly sorry, but I had good reasons to do what I did.  Sometimes,” she wept, “you have to do something unforgiveable, just to go on living. Please believe me.”

“I’ll never believe you again, Miss Adler.  But,” he spun on his heel to fix her with the full fire of his gaze. “I must commend you on your fine acting.  Almost as good as mine, come to think of it.  Shame you couldn’t quite control your physiological responses.”

“Sherlock, listen to me.  Please.  Moriarty.  He’s… he’ll be coming directly for you now.   If my plan had worked, it would have stalled him, just for a while.  But now… just believe me when I say this, Sherlock.  He’s planning to destroy you.  What’s happened tonight is only going to make him more determined.  You may reject sentiment but I know that you have a deep longing… for…someone, something.  Moriarty knows your weaknesses. You’re in danger. You need to be ready for him.”

“You mean _you_ need to be ready,” snarled Sherlock. “I’m sure he’s got plans for you too, now that you’ve disappointed him with your spectacular misjudgement.”

“He’s not my problem.  I need to get far away from here but I’m not running from him or his games.  He was only using me to get to you and your brother.” She looked at him woefully.  “My pursuers are much less playful than Jim Moriarty.  You saw how afraid I was.  It wasn’t _all_ an act.”

“You’re a smart woman.  You manipulate people, exploit their weaknesses. I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” said Sherlock dismissively.  “Good bye, Miss Adler.” He strode out and let the front door slam shut.

“Adieu, Mr Holmes,” she heaved out with a sigh.  “Good luck to us both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this, and sorry for the long wait between chapters. I am very pleased to note that on Lara Pulver's IMDB page it suggests that she will be back in Series 4 so this story could go on for longer than I thought! 
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful betas, splix and redbuttonhole.


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